The Register

Lighting and warming homes in winter, or ransoming encrypted files and buying drugs? Hmmm The directors general of Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority and Environmental Protection Agency have called upon both the EU and Sweden's government to ban cryptocurrency mining.…

Let's be real: Everyone is trying to catch up with Apple Analysis Linux cross-platform packaging format Flatpak has come under the spotlight this week, with the "fundamental problems inherent in [its] design" criticised in a withering post by Canadian software dev Nicholas Fraser.…

Skills gap needs filling somehow The EU needs more cybersecurity graduates to plug the political bloc's shortage of skilled infosec bods, according to a report from the ENISA online security agency.…

A win in the rocketry world: 'Flames came out of the right end' UK nuclear fusion outfit Pulsar Fusion has fired up a chemical rocket engine running on a combination of nitrous oxide oxidiser, high-density polyethylene fuel and oxygen.…

Middle Kingdom's internet giant: It's a switch to enterprise apps. Try ours? Managers of large Chinese state-run companies have told employees to delete, shutdown and discontinue use of Tencent messaging app Weixin for work purposes, citing potential security breaches, according to the Wall Street Journal.…

Roll up, roll up. Come and be the CMA-approved trustee to keep an eye on the Chocolate Factory's antics The torrid tale of Google's Privacy Sandbox took another turn today with the UK's Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) saying it has "secured improved commitments" from the ad giant over the cookie crushing tech.…

Might want to rethink that 'digital to the core' slogan For three days this week, Singapore bank DBS suffered an intermittent outage, preventing customers accessing online accounts and triggering potential punitive measures by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.…

Redesigned SafeToNet feature highlights tech law mess A company repeatedly endorsed by ministers backing the UK's Online Safety Bill was warned by its lawyers that its technology could breach the Investigatory Powers Act's ban on unlawful interception of communications, The Register can reveal.…

When vendors don't update old models, someone must step up The range of Thinkpads you can modernise is getting wider. XyTech is trying to crowdfund a new mainboard for the 2008 T60/T61 so fans can upgrade the much-loved noughties laptop.…

'Just take the meds, Mr Sloper, and enjoy your holiday' Something for the Weekend, Sir? I could just do with some popcorn right now.…

Backups or crack-ups? Welcome to the world of the IBM System/3 On Call Sometimes you're the one on the phone, and other times you're the one that issued the cry for help. Welcome to a story from the On Call archive where a Register reader turns the tables and claims the glory.…

Will keep taxing, but consider payments as credits for future global tax regime India has agreed to wind back the two per cent Equalisation Levy it charges foreign e-commerce companies, and the USA has withdrawn sanctions it imposed to protest the levy.…

M&A department elevated in importance, gets more resources LG Electronics has named its new CEO: William Cho.…

It's a bit pricey, though Fancy a Raspberry Pi 4 in a desktop ITX form factor with 11 PCIe slots? The new Seaberry carrier board may make your wish come true – but for a fairly hefty price.…

Only affects Windows Server Core, so that's alright then A sad-faced Microsoft engineer has had to reset the "Days since we last shot ourselves in the foot" counter at the company's HQ after a security update broke Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Windows Server Core.…

LTS Linux kernel – check. Once proud RISC contender? Nope The compact Linux distribution Alpine has gained the latest LTS Linux kernel with the update to version 3.15, but fans must say goodbye to support for the MIPS64 architecture.…

Just $8,300! Here's one for those with their heads crammed so far up Elon Musk's arse they see the light when he yawns – a desktop bust and custom iPhone 13 Pro design dedicated to the centibillionaire meme machine, both allegedly made from the molten body parts of a Tesla car.…

Customer: 'I should send Cloudflare a Christmas card to say thanks' AWS has improved its free tier for data transfer, from 1GB to 100GB per month for transfer to the internet, and from 50GB to 1TB for CloudFront, its content delivery network.…

It's seldom subject to the same rigour as conventional apparatus Brit MPs are being encouraged to pay attention to the role software plays as they prepare a report on reproducibility in the science and technology industry, which adds around £36bn to the economy.…

Recent legal wranglings sliced, diced, and dished up for your reading pleasure As the US government targets Darktrace personnel as witnesses for Autonomy founder Mike Lynch's forthcoming criminal trial, it's also seeking extra evidence from internal Autonomy whistleblowers.…

Oh wait Interview ESA's Solar Orbiter is to undertake a flyby of Earth, requiring a careful assessment of debris as it dips close to the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) ahead of its main science mission.…

Mandatory vuln reporting, hefty fines for non-compliance A new British IoT product security law is racing through the House of Commons, with the government boasting it will outlaw default admin passwords and more.…

Baidu's Apollo tech exits testing phase, so punters must now pay the machine for a ride. Would you? Poll Sixty square kilometres in Beijing's Economic and Technological Development Zone have been approved for commercial operation of Chinese web giant Baidu's autonomous taxi service.…

Ad giant's first stab at providing the 'world's premier security advisory' starts with the obvious Google's Cybersecurity Action Team has released its first "threat horizon" report on the scary things it's found on the internet.…

Central bank and government to observe effort run by railways, telcos, industrial titans, and private banks A group of over 70 Japanese organisations have decided to create their own blockchain-backed digital currency.…

Cynos.7 trojan found its way into 9.3 million downloads Cybersecurity researchers at anti-virus software company Dr Web have discovered a treasure trove of malware-laced Android games on Huawei's AppGallery.…

Other additions to Entity List are accused of helping Pakistan, North Korea make nukes, missiles The US Dept of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security has added 27 companies to its list of entities prohibited from doing business with the USA on grounds they threaten national security – and one of the firms is associated with HPE’s Chinese joint venture H3C.…

Nice employees you have, be a shame if something were to happen to them The Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor has told 13 foreign businesses, predominantly US tech firms, they must set up and/or maintain offices in Russia if they want to keep doing business in the country.…

'I wish I had done it differently' she tells jury in fraud trial Theranos boss Elizabeth Holmes admitted in court this week she personally added Pfizer and Schering-Plough logos to her startup's presentations while trying to seal a deal with Walgreens.…

Where this technology grew from, and what it offers you Systems Approach The recent announcements from Intel about Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) have prompted us to revisit the topic of how functionality is partitioned in a computing system.…

But Redmond has bigger questions to answer regarding Azure architecture Microsoft hopes to improve the resilience of its cloud services by extending an "outage mode" for Azure Active Directory to cover web as well as desktop applications.…

10 quintillion IP addresses per subnet but expect some pain AWS customers can now create IPv6-only virtual private cloud (VPC) networks, with the company claiming it is a "monumental step forward" towards the enablement of IPv6 on its cloud.…

Over at rival HP, the story is more about building too many Chromebooks and watching demand for them ebb away The humble PC continues to bring home the bacon for Dell, with shipments to corporate customers going through the roof, in spite of previous worries about shortages and price hikes. But things are less rosy at HP, which has been caught out by the recent collapse in Chromebook orders.…

Hardware supply chain issues? Somebody else's problem, guv Hyperconverged infrastructure software outfit Nutanix has almost, but not quite, stopped burning cash as its cash flow neared positivity in its latest set of results.…

Watchdog argues 'fairness' in process should keep some documents confidential Data privacy campaign group noyb, founded by Austrian lawyer Max Schrems, has filed a complaint with the Austrian Office for the Prosecution of Corruption (WKStA) for a potential violation of Austrian criminal laws by the Irish Data Protection Commission.…

Customers accuse Redmond of making standard functionality a pricey extra Microsoft is restoring first-party support for Remote Assistance, logging onto a user's PC to troubleshoot, but "at a price above the existing licensing options."…

Regional exec says Apple wants offensive researchers out of the field because they are harmful to the reputation of the company Kaspersky's APAC director of Global Research and Analysis, Vitaly Kamlyuk, has called Apple's lawsuit against Pegasus maker NSO a "declaration of war against software developers."…

Bruce Willis not required NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory's (APL) Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is under way following a successful launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9.…

'Many appear to placing huge bets on it as a replacement for Huawei' Analysis Hot on the heels of the UK government enshrining in law the power to strip out Huawei, five European carriers have banded together to ask European policymakers to push the development of open radio access network (OpenRAN).…

Millions of devices potentially vulnerable, we're told Check Point Research will today spill the beans on security holes it found within the audio processor firmware in millions of smartphones, which can be potentially exploited by malicious apps to secretly eavesdrop on people.…

This is likely what the IT dept would chuck the regular user Review Lenovo has bucked the trend for vanishingly slim bezels and a paucity of ports with a conservative take on the corporate laptop in the form of the latest T14s ThinkPad.…

... and a damn big radio telescope A team of scientists has managed to bounce a LoRa message off the Moon, setting an impressive record of 730,360km for the furthest distance such a data message has travelled.…

Trillion-dollar giants vow to appeal against penalties that amount to just a few hours of profit Italy's competition authority has fined Apple and Amazon €200m after deciding the pair colluded to unfairly restrict the supply of Apple products and Beats headphones in the Euro nation.…

Clouds and hardware types queueing up to talk now Virtzilla is free of Dell VMware has posted another quarter of strong financial results and revealed that industry players have started to discuss new possibilities now that the company is not part of Dell.…

Description of new 'Official Digital Currency Bill' appears to allow general use of Blockchain India’s government appears set to ban private cryptocurrencies.…

Cisco’s new software license agreement means one payment can cover code and services Cisco has updated its main software licence, the Enterprise Agreement, to version 3.0 and claims it’s now more flexible as while you need to commit to a certain level of spend up-front, your payments can be shifted among products, or even spent on services.…

$17B worth of chip factory will go nicely with the big BBQ joints in the town of Taylor Samsung has finally announced the location of the US semiconductor manufacturing facility it's building with an eye on addressing global silicon shortages: Taylor, Texas.…

In unexpected development, website promptly fell over A website operated by Singapore’s border control agency, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), fell over for five hours almost as soon as registrations for overseas travel were offered to expats who had been stuck in the city-state for over 18 months.…

Beware of Communists bearing internet governance proposals, says Australian Strategic Policy Institute China is actively trying to export its internal internet governance model, according to a paper from the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.…

Funny how this has happened again References to Afilias have been spotted in the technical requirements for the contract to run the trendy top-level domain .tv, suggesting the process is in one way or another stacked in the internet registry operator's favor.…